


the awkward silences with someone you used to love

by nachttour



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Azdaja is a helmsman, F/F, F/M, Scourge Sister Exes, helmed Sollux, navigating the inevitable strange silences around someone you used to love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:47:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26365171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachttour/pseuds/nachttour
Summary: Terezi’s claws clicked against the cold stone dragon head on her cane. The groves and sharp edges of that face had bit into Vriska’s skin more than once. She could feel the ghost of the impact - sharp, sweet, and swift.“You will forgive me if I harbor doubts. We both know that you do best when things are going your way.”The tone of her voice was smooth and relentless. It was the voice of a legislascerator who was absolutely assured of their facts. The violence in her did not solely reside in her hands. It was her words that were the sharpest.Maybe it was the hall. It could be the weird echoing acoustics of the place —something holding living things being treated like objects. Whatever the reason, it sent a shiver down Vriska’s neck. Flipping the non-shaved section of her hair over her shoulder, and resenting her tell as she did it, she stared back at Terezi.“You’re too good for him.”
Relationships: Terezi Pyrope & Sollux Captor, Terezi Pyrope & Vriska Serket
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	the awkward silences with someone you used to love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BugTongue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/gifts).



“You always want to do things in lines and this isn’t always linear!”

Vriska Serket knew that she was right. The rest of the universe was very slow and awful at catching up to her. Particularly the on/off/on/off/pleasestayon/oh ancestors I am going to end you-again ex standing across from her.

Terezi had a hand wrapped around her cane like she wished it were on her neck, and a tight sour expression on her mouth she assumed passed for neutral. It was the pinch of her thin lip under one of her longer fore-fangs that really told Vriska that Terezi was going to have a fucking tantrum about this. That wouldn’t do in the slightest as she needed her on her A-game! What was the point in being reunited with the person who understood her without words if Terezi didn’t use that synchronicity to their best advantage?

“I think based on the world as it is, not the world as I hope the it would be. I know that inevitably something inexorable will happen in your favor.”

She was right to have that faith. It had been earned and was deserved. Then Terezi ruined it by continuing to speak.

“It’s not your luck that I doubt, but the safety of the troll we are going to save.” Terezi fixes her with a glare, biting out the next words. “And ours.”

Huffing out a beleaguered sigh, Vriska looked back at her. “So go over it again then. What was it that you think we need to do here?”

“It’s not going to be as simple as busting in when the guard changes. This facility was… too convenient. It was all too simple. “ Terezi ground her teeth together.

Whatever Pyrope’s issue was with trusting good fortune was, it was not for Vriska to deal with any longer. There was a certain relief and sadness mixed together in that freedom.

“It took us almost a perigee to find him. That was with all of the tracking-assists and other things that he left us. I know that you’re pale for him, and we’re going to get you to him but you gotta trust me. There’s a reason that I am the best, and there’s a reason that you called me versus anyone else that we know.”

_Scourge sisters, remember?_

There was not a power on this planet that would let her say it; to try and pull Terezi back to her and remind her of all that they shared. It was beneath her. If the past and everything that they had accomplished was not enough then there was nothing she can do about it. She was better than this. Better than some lowblood who was going to wink out like a flickering light within the space of a couple of breaths.

Captor was beneath her.

Sure, he had a quick mind and a brain full of static and fuck-off. He was a little funny, or at least he had been when they were wigglers and he was all right with computers but that was the extent of what there was to recommend him. Terezi was the kind of troll that could become a legend. Her mind was like a knife, watching her move was like watching the ballectrocution corps perform at opening season. (Only so much more entertaining.)

The bitch would do what she wanted though, and because Vriska was good and generous beyond what any of these shitstains deserved she decided to help. Her opinion about the job and the specifics therein was not required. That was a lesson that had taken a few sweeps to stick.

Okay, she could admit that Captor was powerful. He was that. The anchored pins and tiny electrodes med-sutured into her muscles quietly remind her that she has to be real about the enemy. To face fearlessly what was true — the training manuals for intel-ops all espoused the same idea.

“You don’t have to accept the situation as inevitable, but before anything else face fearlessly what is true and then bend the world to your will. You uniquely can make this true.”

Frankly it wasn’t a loss. Terezi was damaged goods. It was better to be a free agent. Better not to have all of her nagging and her pushing constantly. Better to not have to try and be anything more than how amazing she already was.

A hand settled between her shoulder blades and intent and power rushed like a static storm through her mind, ready to direct out like the striking limbs of her lusus through the plump body of a wiggler. She forcibly unclenched her fists and let the flow of energy in her mind dissipate.

Terezi was behind her. Vriska could feel the slight softness of her digits on the frond and the placement of the touch was a dead giveaway.

“I have a friend that gave us a map of the interior.”

Terezi’s voice had lost the frustration and returned to calm — she’d pulled away from her and Vriska hated it. There should be no distance between them.

“You have sharper eyes than I do Serket. Let’s get this done. I know that you have approximately a hundred irons in the fire.”

The statement was followed with a tiny, huffed laugh. She would know, she used to help Vriska manage them.

Let it never be said that age has not brought Vriska even further excellence. Ascending to Fleet and surviving the first sweeps in it was a gauntlet she had been ill-prepared for.

She let everything else fall away and took the tablet. It pulsed with a healthy charge, a few of the legs conforming to the shape of her palm to help with stability.

Treating them nicely will slightly boost processing power — so she carefully shifted a claw to scratch at one of the living segments. Beneath the pad of her forefinger the rapid-tempo pulse of the thing taped. In response to the attention the battery-remainder increased fractionally. It was all a matter of stimulus. Give the right kind of input and then the things that she wanted would come out. It was worth knowing the right ways to touch and act, so that they can be applied at the right time.

“I’ve got the layout. I don’t think this matters, but tell your contact thanks. If there’s something they need done, I’ll make it happen.”

One must keep their contacts happy. Vriska had also learned this.

Her ascension marks were burned deep through her skin, down into the chitin itself. There are moments when she pushes a claw into them where they sit nestled under her clavicles, trying to see how deeply she could go — how far duty to the Empire went. It was a caste-privilege to be anesthetized during the procedure but she’d never reacted well to medication.

Partway through the branding, her eye slid open, rolling against the tape lightly anchoring it closed. Above her the medicullers chatted with each other - tones flat and bored.

“Intelligence. Huh. Wouldn’t have expected that. They have to test well for that, and this one looks half-feral. Guess there’s something going on in there.” A gloved claw tapped against her temple.

The same voice continued. “They use the rest of the manipulators for more boring shit — propaganda, population control on the frontiers. ”

“Uh huh.”

“Wonder how long it’ll take before this one pops?”

The second voice sounded even less interested in her. Had she come into a different part of the conversation she might have assumed they were talking about a battery. She was an asset, not equipment.

“Dunno. Her rating is pretty good. Don’t have a good feeling about some of the vascular concerns — looks like they did a lot of work on her as a wiggler. Some rudimentary wet-tech, but it’s pretty good for what they’re working with. Fuck. Wonder if there’s a rogue helms-tech down there or if there was someone else.”

“I wouldn’t mind having someone more qualified than you bulge-wipe.”

Teeth clicked — it sounded like disembodied death hovering over her face. Even through the veil of drugs, she felt her body twitch in instinctual fear.

“You can only hope that you find someone better than me.”

The smell of burning skin shifted over her like a creeping fog, mixed in with the other chemical notes of the place. It was far away, like the clouds that used to settle in the valley near dawn. Someone else was burning and she laid there to bear witness.

“She’ll probably stroke out before she hits full maturity. The stress causes aneurysms.”

“Yeah. They do like to push ‘em hard first, and then the ones that can take it get put onto finesse jobs.”

Hearing them candidly discussing her death had ensured that she worked smarter and more brutally than her troop-mates. When they asked her to control more than she might possibly have been able to, she assessed ways to take out the leadership of the enemy instead. She bounced her mind relentlessly off of some of the rusts and other psychics, burning them out to amplify herself. Beneath her unrelenting touch some collapsed. Some shambled through the battlefield with blood sliding out of oculars and aurals.

Vriska finished the missions.

She did not die.

None of them deserved to die.

However, she was strong. She was strong enough to do something about it. The other ones would have to save themselves.

Maybe, just maybe, if she could do other things, then she would find herself more like Mindfang. She would become more like the figure of her wigglerhood who was both indomitable and free, who had never had superheated metal pushed through her skin, and who had helped other trolls because she was magnificent. The journals were long memorized and hidden away in the gutted space that no longer contained her lusus. They deserved to rest together — two things more complicated than their basic explanations.

Fleet was a carnival mirror reflection of Alternia, only out in the expanded galactic empire. There are the same personalities, same petty power-grabbing and revenge cycles; but, the stakes are infinitely more complex and the risks much higher. All of this has honed her perspective and changed her priorities.

In the middle distance, the guards started the process of shift-change. Two lumbering olives who looked like they would gladly be anywhere else headed toward a shuttle bound for the gate-port.

Terezi did not have to make a sound. She simply straightened in Vriska’s periphery and it was enough to signal the beginning. Taking the minds of the incoming guards was as easy as sliding her fingers into a pool of tepid water. The resistance was barely an impression against her mind.

The two of them stepped forward, activating face-obscuring tech. Holo-fields shimmered to life over their heads and horns, made up of an array of shifting pixels. Even if the security feeds were archived and accessed after they dealt with the facility, there would be no identifying them. Walking through the front entrance and liberating both weapons and key-cards off of the guards, the pair of them made their way into the facility.

*

The occasional soft tap of Terezi’s cane provided the only sound to accompany their footsteps. All biomedical-facilities were the same: large, cold, easily sterilized and echoing. There was a nebula of monitoring equipment lit up with a spectrum of colored lights reflecting against panes of glass. Not visible but still glittering were the minds in the building - they shone like cold stars - remote and silent. If she stretched to the edge of her range she would be able to grasp some of them. Others would remain as elusive as the things that they imitated in her mind’s eye.

“I’m glad that I caught you between missions.”

“Well I am really important, but this is a special circumstance.”

There was so much quiet between them. Sometimes Vriska dreamt of a different world — one where they played the game that Vantas was muttering about before he disappeared. One where they didn’t get shunted off into the military.

It was enough that she almost felt like it was the real one and this world that she existed in was the dream.

In the other world she had wings and there was as much joy as there was sorrow. It was not arguably any better than here — though there was so much more power in her hands. A dizzying, delightful, lonely power. It was the kind of power that bends the universe. It was the kind of power that finally bent her, even while assuring that she is the most powerful thing in existence.

Reality was a cramped scouting ship with two other caste-peers that she had papped, fucked, and beat in equal measures. Vriska didn't love or hate them and when they eventually died she would feel very little. It is a certainty that it will be the same for them. Power in the waking world is information, and control.

The battery in their ship watched her like she was a malfunctioning line of code every time she steped into the helmsblock. His name was Azdaja before he became _The Esc8pe_. He’s older than dirt, had discoloration in his horns that spiraled like lightning up the keretin and was faster than any ship Vriska had ever met.

Other than Captor, maybe.

Her crewmates had discovered him at an aftermarket auction for burnt out helms-trolls. They purchased him for some of the spinal and other infrastructure he came with, figuring they would salvage it out of the corpse. The type of specs were no longer on-market after a public debacle. Apparently some of the little ships outfitted with the right pilot and that breed of helmwire, coupled with the internal ports the company designed could out-fly most of the Alternian Imperial Fleet, save the Battleship Condescension.

Her Imperious Condescension was not the sort to be shown up in any arena. The company quickly was divested, mined for technicians and any hint of their technology disappeared off of the market.

Azdaja bit the shit out of her hand when she held it over his face to see if he was still breathing. The scar was going to carry until her new molt. Instead of slapping him hard enough to dislocate his jaw and smearing her blood across his gaunt face, she just laughed. The two of them were alright after that. She talked the crew out of putting him down. She could respect sheer spite. If the crazy bastard wanted to stay alive then she was not going to deprive him of the satisfaction.

Still, sometimes when they were alone and she was doing what maintenance she was capable of, he would watch her with the slow shimmer-pulse of his eyes and frown at her.

“I’m still not sure that you’re actually here. Or I am. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Sometimes you look like death. And sometimes I think that death is just standing behind you, patiently waiting.”

As far as she was aware it was only her that he speaks with. There was a sort of pride in that. The other point in his favor was that the dude was wickedly good at number games for an old corpse mostly made out of bio-wire. Even if the other two idiots were at each other in whatever combination the night called for, she could play a decent game and have some sort of a challenge in it.

“If you’ve got something to say, I think you should just unburden yourself.”

Pyrope stopped in the middle of the hall, a little dense black hole of intent.

Turning to face her, Vriska frowned.

“We’ve got to get to your battery, don’t we? Everything is fine. If I had something to say I would say it.”

Terezi’s claws clicked against the cold stone dragon head on her cane. The groves and sharp edges of that face had bit into Vriska’s skin more than once. She could feel the ghost of the impact - sharp, sweet, and swift.

“You will forgive me if I harbor doubts. We both know that you do best when things are going your way.”

The tone of her voice was smooth and relentless. It was the voice of a legislascerator who was absolutely assured of their facts. The violence in her did not solely reside in her hands. It was her words that were the sharpest.

Maybe it was the hall. It could be the weird echoing acoustics of the place —something holding living things being treated like objects. Whatever the reason, it sent a shiver down Vriska’s neck. Flipping the non-shaved section of her hair over her shoulder, and resenting her tell as she did it, she stared back at Terezi.

“You’re too good for him.”

She threw it into the fraught distance between them like a bomb, with a tone as light as if she was discussing the color of the sky. If she couldn’t have what she wants then she can blow this all up. Turn it into something better than this awkward limbo that they’ve come to rest in. Acid crawled up her wind chute- throat. Her fucking throat, no one uses the wiggler words in fleet. It felt like she was drowning in acid.

“Hm.”

Instead of answering, Terezi turned in a blur of force, torquing her small and thick form to slice the throat of a technician turning a corner. Pressing a finger to her mouth, she backed up to try to get out of line of sight.

Of course Pyrope was right. The entry thus-far had gone too easy.

What was life without a challenge?

She could see herself reflected in the windows separating the hall from the offices they had been passing. A multitude of her looked back - long and thin. Sharp like a stiletto, honed down to the absolute essentials. Over the sweeps she had gotten better — there was no telltale flicker around her when she reached out to take them. They just fell into her web, and their feeble shaking struggles did nothing to free them.

Four.

Six.

Ten.

Thirty technicians stood in the hall.

Some had tablets open — communication relay software up. Some had palmhusks out, texts and calls interrupted.

It was all fucked. They won’t have enough time. It won’t be a stealth mission like she had hoped.

Blood thudded against her temples and her fangs ground together roughly as she held them.

Blank eyes bore into her. Quadrantmates, teammates, researchers, cleaning staff and a few guards. Histories, opportunities, and potential revenge cycles waited in a dense clump.

There was no one to act as a relay.

It needed to be taken care of now.

The sound of weapons charging in the small space was very loud. It was a multi-toned choked whine that pitched up as many different laser-based weapons fired. Those that weren’t armed used their hands to calmly crush throats. Wheezes fill the air and claws scrabbled in involuntary movements against the inexorable. The windows were splattered with a rainbow of hues. New colors started to form out of the blending drops as they slid down the glass.

Terezi watched her and it was like standing at the feet of that old statue that Aradia showed her back when they were planetside. It was of a legislascerator, scales in hand and eyes inlaid with a bioluminescent stone. They shimmered red in the right weather conditions. The monolith was broken down, her face half hidden in the dirt, her scales balanced at a bizarre angle where they had fallen. Still, sometimes Vriska had sat in front of her as a wiggler, staring into the pulsing glow of the rocks and trying to understand what it was that she was looking at.

All that she had discerned from those long evenings was that the sea would come for it in time, just like it would everything else on their world - both in a real and metaphorical sense. It had already started to wear away the rock and break the poor thing down.

There was a wet feeling on her mouth and Vriska wiped at it absently, the back of her hand coming away a muted amalgamation of cool tones and a few warmer ones.

“I hope he’s worth it.”

Tapping a claw against the randomizer on her facial-disruption software, Vriska stalked down the hallway toward the limited-access area of the labs. If Captor was somewhere, it was likely he would be there.

**Author's Note:**

> Drone Season 2020 prompt: Vriska and Terezi team up to save Sollux from getting helmed. He's in hiding somewhere, they just have to sniff him out. Meanwhile Terezi and Vriska are dealing with the fact that they are ex's, and Vriska does not approve of Terezi being <> with a battery she won't ever get to see in space. 
> 
> So you can have some save the boy and feelings.... as a treat owo


End file.
